Rhetorical Sources of China’s Financial Policy Interests: Discursive Interaction, Economic Crisis Lessons, and China’s Rise in the Global Financial System

PhD Oral Presentation

Since the late 1980s, China’s financial reform has revealed a slow and fractured path. Plans for financial liberalisation have been constrained, postponed, or reversed, particularly in times of economic crisis.

What explains China’s financial policy interests, and how have economic crises shaped them? In this presentation, Wenting will examine the discursive construction of China’s financial policy interests since the late 1980s and its implications for China’s rise in the global financial system. Specifically, she will trace how China’s understanding of market mechanisms and financial security evolved, as shaped by the domestic debates about the meanings and implications of the late-1980s inflation crisis, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, and the 2015 stock market crash. In this process, she will also unpack how China sought to strategically use financial markets as a tool to serve the party-state’s domestic strategies and global geoeconomic ambitions.

About the speaker

Wenting He is a PhD candidate in International, Political, and Strategic Studies at the Australian National University. Her PhD project examines how economic crises shape China’s financial policy interests since the late 1980s. Wenting has widely published journal articles, policy reports, and analytical pieces in areas of Chinese political economy, US-China geopolitics, and development finance.

This is a hybrid presentation. Zoom details will be sent upon registration.

Image: Kaboompics.com from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bright-american-flag-with-roll-of-greenbacks-4386344/


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